In his Easter basket, or rather under it, Magoo got a gigantic illustrated Lego Star Wars encyclopedia. In a plastic sleeve on the bottom corner of the book was a tiny Lego Luke Skywalker. So Sunday night he’s talking to some friends of ours about his Easter and he says, “You wanna see the awesome thing the Easter Bunny brought me?”

“Sure,” they say. What else can they say? The entire evening’s been a frantic show and tell, the likes of which only a second child with a captive audience can pull off. I am a second child. I would know. They know that he’s gonna show them the present whether they say, “Sure,” or, “Why don’t you take your pathetic Easter present and shove it where the sun don’t shine?” so they might as well be gracious.

At this point they’ve already seen his gaping tooth orifice and the way his tongue can slide through it, heard all of his jokes, learned how you can amputate the legs from multiple Lego guys to make stilts for one lucky Lego guy, and been subjected to detailed descriptions of multiple video games. What’s one more exhibit? Besides, we’re holding them hostage and if they want pie, they need to play along. Also. He is adorable.

So he brings out the tiny Lego guy and goes off about all of its many amazing properties (hair, moving limbs, painted-on medallion, relation to Star Wars) and its deficiencies (lack of light saber or weapon of any kind, representation of a part of the movie that involves kissing). He loves this Lego guy and is so glad that he got him for Easter.

“Oh, yeah,” he adds as an afterthought, “And he comes with a book.”

All day long on Valentine’s Day, I was listening to romantical music to put me in the mood for love. I pulled out the eighties power ballads, the Whitney, the Celine. I got in deep.

And in his deepest of mini-manly hearts, Magoo was NOT impressed. He was begging, BEGGING, for his favorite songs but I told him we could only listen to songs about love. At one point, he said, “Please can we listen to Ghostbusters? It’s about love. If you save people from bad ghosts, that’s love.”

He has a point. I think it’s okay to stretch the meaning of Valentine’s Day just a bit.

For Dan’s present, I got him the movie RED because red is one of the official colors of love and also there’s nothing quite as romantic as automatic weapons.

Dan got me some lovely flowers and serenaded me with My One and Only Love played on his saxophone. Ahhhh. That is romance. Then to finish off our evening, we tried to get our rabbit ears to pick up ABC so we could watch Castle, gave up and worked on our laptops side by side.

The kids even slept at some point last night, despite the fact that their veins ran thick with high fructose corn syrup and their teeth were died green from Fun Dip. In all honesty, that was a bit disappointing. It should have been pink.

And may all your heart-shaped pancakes be fluffy!

My parents and sister came to visit us for Christmas and it was so fun to have them here. It’s the first time we’ve ever had family up for the holiday and we wanted to make it special so we each chose a gift for each of our visitors. This year for the first time I asked the kids to use their own allowance money to pay for half of the gifts. It made the gifts more meaningful and it caused them to think more seriously about what to give.

Both kids got Auntie Meg jewelry because she is fashionable like that. Magoo got Papa a laser pointer and Grammy some chapstick.

After hours of looking, Laylee was browsing the little red boxed gift items on the end cap at Target when she came upon the Perfect Present for Grammy. She held the box up triumphantly.

Me: It’s a mini megaphone.
Laylee [grinning and nodding]: WITH siren!

I had to let her buy it, because who won’t remember the year that Grammy received a mini megaphone WITH siren for Christmas?

The gift was especially poignant considering Grammy suffered from migraines off and on for the first few days they were at our house. Yes, a siren will come in very handy for Grammy.

My sister KayLynn is guest posting today to talk about the National Day of Listening. I am a huge proponent of capturing the stories of those we love and I think this is a great way to spend our time on Friday. If you have contact with your parents or grandparents, take some time to listen and record what they have to say.

Thanksgiving is a wonderful time of year. Good food, family, and reminders all around of all that we have to be thankful for. One thing that has been on my mind lately is how grateful I am for my wonderful family and how they have impacted me in my life. I have shared so many good times, been supported through hard times, and been blessed so much because of my parents and siblings.

This year, as I sit around the dinner table for our Thanksgiving feast, I want it to last longer than just a day. I want to always remember the stories my dad tells about his college days, or the stories my mom tells about her parents and growing up on the farm. More than always remembering the stories, I want my children to be able to know their grandparents and great-grandparents, to know where they got their blonde hair or short legs or patience or ability to make others feel loved. I want to read them bedtime stories of their great-grandfather’s escapades in the Air Force or of their great-grandmother’s love of gardening.

Preserving the stories of our parents and grandparents can seem a monumental task. However, as I have started writing and reading the histories of my family members, I realize that this task is completely worth it—not to mention extremely fulfilling. And to help in the task of recording and preserving your family’s stories, StoryCorps (starting in 2008) instigated a National Day of Listening on the day after Thanksgiving: November 26, 2010. This Day of Listening is basically a day set aside as a time for you to record (in any format) the stories of your loved ones. If you are hesitant on how to begin, read more at myunwrittenlegacy.wordpress.com/, or you can find many resources at nationaldayoflistening.org/.

Happy Mother’s Day from our bed of revellers to yours!

My kids like April Fools’ Day. It’s a festive time when they spend every waking minute lying their faces off and then saying, “Just KIDDING! April Fools!” Laylee said the best trick she played all day was to tell one friend that our grandma had died. I told Laylee that might be a mean trick and she said, “No it wasn’t. She wasn’t sad. She doesn’t even know our grandma.”

Magoo came up with the best trick ever. He used it all day long and I fell for it every single time. Here’s how it went:

Magoo: Hey Mom?
Me: Yeah Buddy?
Magoo: Just KIDDING! I didn’t really need anything. April FOOLS!

10 minutes later:

Magoo: Mom! Hey Mom? Excuse me Mom!
Me: What do you need?
Magoo: NU-THING! April Fools!

20 minutes after that:

Magoo: Mom? You know what?
Me: I don’t know. What?
Me: April FOOLS! I wasn’t gonna say anything. HA HA HA HA!

He spent all day changing it up, finding new ways to trick me with the same joke, which was basically my name. It was sweet. I mostly laughed but on April 2nd I stomped all over his fun. “It’s not April Fools’ Day today. That doesn’t work anymore.”

I’m not sure what “That doesn’t work anymore” really means. I think it means something like, “For real. If you keep doing that I will go mental and then you won’t be allowed to eat sugar ever ever again and I’m pretty sure that wasn’t your plan so it probably won’t work for you to keep saying it.”

Dear Parents and Leprechauns of the World,
Stop the madness! Today I am begging you, BEGGING. YOU. To stop this senseless St. Patty’s escalation and let the rest of us get back to our old traditions of making green pancakes and wearing a button that says, “Kiss Me! I’m Irish!”

Why are you all making it so hard for me to live up to the expectations of Leprechaun Mania? So a couple of years ago they turned the milk green. Now they’re leaving gifts, candy, new green clothes, actual pots of GOLD for the children???? When will it end?

Laylee comes home and tells me about all the insane gifts being enjoyed by her other friends on this day of days and wonders why the Leprechauns hate our family so much. Maybe it’s because I refuse to create one more holiday of needless, money-wasting, gift-giving insanity. Maybe it’s because I’m heartless. (I think it’s the first reason.)

I mean, come on. Pretty soon we’re gonna be doing scavenger hunts on Flag day where you have the chance of finding A NEW CAR – compliments of the flag fairy or kids will be expecting money under their pillows left on President’s Day Eve by the ghosts of their favorite dead presidents. If Benjamin Franklin thinks you’ve been good this year, you get a hundred. (Okay Rebecca! He wasn’t a president but he’s on money and I’m Canadian so what’re you gonna do?)

COME ON! Join me today in a holiday non-proliferation agreement. Do we need a magical gift-bearing mascot for every blinking day of the year? What about the Solstice Gnome or the Green Earth Day Gomer? Make it stop. Only you can help prevent my daughter bawling her brains out because even though she left out a long note and a monetary offering to the leprechauns, they left her nothing but some green milk in the fridge and today sucks – it sucks and it “doesn’t even feel like St. Patrick’s Day.”

“Maybe we need to make our own magic,” I suggested.

She’s not buying it… because all the other kids are going to show up to school with heavy-laden pack mules bearing their bounteous leprechaun harvest and I’m the one who pays the price.

Love, Sincerely,
-Kathryn
The Grinch Who Stole St. Patrick’s Day and is Proud of It

Dan and I wrap several presents for each other every Christmas. They’re mostly small things, DVDs, gift cards, a vegetable brush shaped like a tuna. On each present we place a stick-on gift tag and address it with a different set of cutesie nicknames.

To: Papa-sicle, Love: Mama-Pop
To: Computer Geek, from: Hot Blogger
To: Sugar Face, from: Googly Bear
To: Daddy Dan, Love: Mama Kate

These are meant to be funny, sometimes cute and always a teensy bit embarrassing. We stole the tradition from my parents who also frequently kissed while exchanging presents. I know. Gross. But here I am a parent myself and I’m doing the exact same thing.

Laylee disapproves of this tradition, not because of the gross shmooptitude or even the fact that it’s sometimes hard to figure out which present goes to whom at a family gathering. Her all-seeing eye of disapproval is turned towards us because we use sticky labels instead of making elaborate hand-written cards for each present.

She caught me doing this the week before Christmas and asked, “Aren’t you going to make a card for that present?”

“Nope,” I responded.

She looked disgusted. “Fine,” she said, “I’ll do it.”

I was confused. Afterall, it was my present to Dan. She took the name off the sticky label, “Daddy Dan” and incorporated it into this passive aggressive Christmas card.

The envelope:

“Because Mom didn’t want to.”

And then inside the card:

She then stuck this card onto my present for Dan over top of my sticky label. She made no secret that the actual present was from me but that due to my extreme laziness, she had needed to step in and take the gift to the next level.

I applaud her use of parentheses at the bottom of the card where she reiterates my lack of card-making desire. This mom person must be quite the shmuck, I’ll tell you what.

Boys and girls are different. It’s true. My kids continually remind me of this. Christmas was no exception. Dan took them shopping and let them each pick a card for me.

This is what Laylee came up with:

She chose, sweet, traditional and religious. On the inside she wrote a tender message that makes me want to actually become “the sweetist mom around and spred love throu the town.”

Magoo, on the other hand, decided to go with blood-drenched crazy reindeer.

Dan read him the words on the card and asked, “Are you sure?” and Magoo answered emphatically, “Yep. I’m sure.”

I think they’re both perfect.